Architecture based model driven software and system development for real-time embedded systems

Architecture Description Languages provide significant opportunity for the incorporation of formal methods and engineering models into the analysis of software and system architectures. A standard is being developed for embedded real-time safety critical systems which will support the use of various formal approaches to analyze the impact of the composition of systems from hardware and software and which will allow the generation of system glue code with the performance qualities predicted. The standard, the Avionics Architecture Description Language (AADL), is based on the MetaH language developed under DARPA and US Army funding and on the model driven architectural based approach demonstrated with this technology over the last 8 years. The AADL standard will include a UML profile useful for avionics, space, automotive, robotics and other real-time concurrent processing domains including safety critical applications. The paper provides an overview of the concepts supported in MetaH and the AADL as examples of the architecture based model driven paradigm and notes several new model based approaches becoming available.